APPN Implementers Workshop

AIW6 Meeting Minutes

AIW 6 was held at the Radisson Hotel, in downtown Raleigh, North Carolina
on Tuesday October 11th through Thursday October 13th, 1994.  There
were 162 attendees representing 38 companies.

Tuesday, Day 1, was tutorial day.  The tutorials were very well received.
There were introductory tutorial sessions on APPN, DLUR, HPR, Network
Management, and ATM.  In addition we held advanced tutorials on Data Link
Switching, IETF SNA MIBs, and APPN Directory Services.

Also on Tuesday, the Data Link Switching Related Interest Group (DLSw
RIG) met and there was a demonstration of a DLSw conformance tester by
Digital Technologies Corp.  The DLSw RIG met throughout the conference
and made great progress towards a completed Version 1 specification.
The RIG anticipates Approved Pages status in October and Closed Pages in
November.  In the evening, the IETF DLC MIB RIG met and several AIW
members took advantage of the entertainment at Comedy Sportz.

On Wednesday morning, Day 2 of the conference, reporters Michael Cooney
of Network world and Tim Wilson of Communications Week were in
attendance.  This was the first time the press was allowed in any session
of the AIW.  Tim, Michael, and most of the AIW members attending
expressed satisfaction with this trial.

Plenary sessions on Wednesday included a customer talk from Mike Zavodsky
of UPS, a discussion, by Wellfleet's Paul Phillips, about Wellfleet's
APPN implementation using the DCL source code, and an IBM executive
overview by Rick McGee, Director of Networking Controllers.

The not-so-well-kept-secret "surprise" anniversary party for Systems
Network Architecture (SNA) was a highlight of the workshop.  Dr. Jim Gray
hosted several other IBM SNA luminaries including Paul Lindfors, Verlin
Hoberecht, Ed Sussenguth, and Bill Bernstein who talked about the past,
present, and future of SNA.  The ceremony included reminiscing and much
laughter.  A "Seven Layer" sheet cake was wheeled in accompanied by the
killer keyboard sounds of IBM's Tom Moore.  IBM's Networking Hardware
Division Vice President of Quality and General Development, J. L. "Len"
Felton, made the first cut of the cake and paid homage to those people,
inside and outside of IBM, present at the AIW or not, who contributed to
the outstanding success of SNA.

Over lunch and cake, the first meeting of the ATM BOF was held.
There was a lot of interest shown and we expect the BOF to continue
in the future.  Also over lunch, there was a presentation of the
APPC Application Suite and Discovery by Mark Peters and Martin
Presler-Marshall, both of IBM.

Wednesday afternoon continued with a working session for the APPN
Reference SIG.  At this session, two SIGlets were formed to work on two
separate APPN Architecture extension proposals made by Jim Cobban of
Northern Telecom/Bell Northern Research, and Dave Bryant of 3COM.

During the afternoon, there were also demos of the APPC Application
Suite and of the NetMarks performance tool.

Many intrepid AIW attendees worked long into the night on the APPC
MIB RIG, and Border Node BOF.  This was the first BOF session
to discuss Border Node requirements and there was great interest
in this function.  The group agreed that Border Node deserves
more focus in the future.

On the morning of Day 3, Thursday, George Grover of IBM Research
presented Wireless Networking with APPN/HPR, showing how APPN/HPR
is well suited for the demands of mobile wireless networks.  Christine
Martin of DCL talked about DCL's experiences implementing DLUR.

Over lunch, the Validation BOF met and attendees discussed their goals
for and possible future role of the BOF group.  Also discussed were the
possibilities for future Multi-Vendor connectivity tests and joint
participation of 10 AIW member companies at the March 1995 Interop.

The HPR SIG met Thursday afternoon and after extensive technical
discussion came to a consensus to promote the architecture to Approved
Pages status.

The closing session heard reports from each of the SIGs, RIGs, and BOFs,
and gave official AP status to HPR.  The group discussed future
conference schedules (many attendees requested that we try to have AIW 7
in the San Francisco Bay Area in April of 1995).  Ed Tremblay of IBM
talked about new Internet tool possibilities for the AIW.  Chuck Brotman
led a discussion about the members' reactions to having reporters at AIW
6 and whether to pursue continued press involvement in the AIW (consensus
was to allow it again in the future in a similar limited way, to think
about ways to improve it, and to discuss it further via the internet).

More detailed information on many of the above mentioned SIGs, RIGs
and BOFs is or will be available on their respective mail exploders.

Thanks to all for making this, as one AIW member/attendee put it,
"the best overall AIW session to date."

Best Regards,
Chuck Brotman - AIW Chair

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